Send via SMS

A Guy's Moleskine Notebook

Thoughts and reflections on works of fiction and literature. Pondering of life through pictures and words. Babbling about gay rights. Travelogues and anecdotes.

  • [1] Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain
  • [2] Arthur Golden: Memoirs of a Geisha
  • [3] Yu Hua: To Live
  • [4] Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty
  • [5] Colm Toibin: The Master
  • [6] Carlos Ruiz Zafon: The Shadow of the Wind
  • [7] William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
  • [8] Charles Higham: The Civilization of Angkor
  • [9] Graham Greene: A Burnt-Out Case
  • [10] Dai Sijie: Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch
  • [11] Alan Hollinghurst: The Swimming-Pool Library
  • [12] Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
  • [13] Colm Toibin: The Blackwater Lightship
  • [14] Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star
  • [15] Ross King: Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
  • [16] Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
  • [17] Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections
  • [18] Colm Toibin: The Story of the Night
  • [19] John Banville: Shroud
  • [20] Leo Tolstoy: Resurrection
  • [21] Peter Hessler: River Town, Two Years on the Yangtze
  • [22] Ian McEwan: The Atonement
  • [24] Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera
  • [25] Ignacio Padilla: Shadow without a Name
  • [26] Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
  • [27] Richard Russo: Straight Man
  • [28] Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground
  • [29] Alan Hollinghurst: The Spell
  • [30] Hermann Broch: The Death of Virgil
  • [31] James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room
  • [32] Ken Kesey: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • [33] Xingjian Gao: One Man's Bible
  • [34] C. Jay Cox: Latter Days
  • [35] Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird
  • [36] William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
  • [37] Daniel A. Helminiak: What The Bible Really Says about Homosexuality
  • [38] James Baldwin: Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
  • [39] Kenji Yoshino: Covering - The Hidden Assault of Civil Rights
  • [40] Italo Calvino: If, On a Winter's Night A Traveler
  • [41] Arthur Phillips: The Egyptologist
  • [42] George Orwell: 1984
  • [43] Michael Warner: The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and Ethics of Queer Life
  • [44] Andrew Sullivan: Virtually Normal
  • [45] Henry James: The Wings of the Dove
  • [46] Jose Saramago: Blindness
  • [47] Umberto Eco: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
  • [48] Dan Brown: Da Vinci Code
  • [49] Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
  • [50] Ken Follett: The Pillars of Earth
  • [51] Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
  • [52] Michael Thomas Ford: Alec Baldwin Doesn't Like Me
  • [53] Jonathan Franzen: How To Be Alone
  • [54] Jonathan Lethem: The Fortress of Solitude
  • [55] Matthew Pearl: The Dante Club
  • [56] Zadie Smith: White Teeth
  • [57] Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Double
  • [58] Jose Saramago: The Double
  • [59] Andrew Holleran: Dancer from the Dance
  • [60] Heinrich von Kleist: The Marquise of O & Other Stories
  • [61] Andrew Holleran: In September, the Light Changes
  • [62] Tom Perrotta: Little Children
  • March 02, 2006

     

    What Classics Novel Are You?

    I took a What-Classics-Novel-Are-You test through BookGirl's Nightstand. I'm supposed to identify from a bunch of statements to pick the ones that best suit my personality, social and political interests. The verdict of analysis is given in the form of a novel. So I'm The Name of the Rose.
    The name of the rose
    "Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a mystery novel dealing with theology, especially with catholic vs liberal issues. You search wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that learning is essential in life."


    Which literature classic are you?
    brought to you by Quizilla
    Not bad at all. The book is a resident of my top-10 novel list. It is in perfect accord to my reading preference. I'm just curious at all the titles that the repertory might have embodied. Danielle from A Work in Progress reports her being 1984, while Amelia from Amelia's Passion is named The Lord of the Rings. Does anyone know all the possible verdicts? Does it include The Master and Margarita?

    Danielle mentions some 59% of Americans don't own a single book. So magazines and The Guiness Book of World Records don't count eh? The number is indeed quite shocking but, if you also think about the percentage of couch potatoes who subscribe to all cable TV options that are available, the number might be okay. Bookworms like me make up for the rest of the country. National Endowment for the Arts warned in a 2004 report that literary reading (meaning, Da Vinci Code doesn't count folks) has been drastically in decline with less Americans reading literature. The report is said to "document a national crisis." Women read more literature than men do, but the survey indicated literary reading by both genders is declining. Only slightly more than one-third of adult males now read literature. Reading among women is also declining significantly, but at a slower rate. The bookstores reflect this trend as you see more and more chick-lit, popular fiction titles which sadly inundate the literature section.

    5 Comments:

    Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Yeah - another Name of the Rose :)

    3/03/2006 6:50 AM  
    Blogger Jef said...

    "Virginia Woolf: Orlando. You are a challenge, for outer events, the outside world, the time etc. play no importance to you. Your focus is in writing, in gender issues, and inside your own head. Self-analysis and exploration of yourself as well as the outer world hold great importance to you."

    Ironically, I haven't read the book, but I did see the movie.

    3/03/2006 1:39 PM  
    Blogger mattviews said...

    Jef-

    I've only read To The Lighthouse, and Mrs. Dalloway. In fact I have never heard of this. But I suits you pretty well as you're working on your screenplay and you're obviously keen on gender issues!

    3/03/2006 2:00 PM  
    Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Isn't it weird that reading is declining yet I swear I have seen statistics where they say more books are being published now than ever before? Who is reading them? I will read an occasional chiclit (I have to be honest...), but I do think that bookstores are way too inundated by that genre. I have nothing against it, but when I look at the "new releases" table I want to see "good books" not just chiclit (and not saying that amongst the chiclit there is nothing good, too). I am lucky if I can pick up one book from these selections usually. It really depresses me. I usually have to dig around in the shelves for something, new, and really good (more literature than just fiction).

    3/05/2006 4:38 PM  
    Blogger mattviews said...

    There *are* more books being published and only because they're mostly business, self-help, manual type of books. But in the general readership declines and National Endowments of the Arts does not attribute it to internet or cable TV - people simply read less and value literature less.

    Would you count THE TIME TRAVELLER'S WIFE chicklit? I actaully enjoyed the prose if not so much the story. It was well written with lumps of philosophical thought in it. Picked it up for summer reading last year.

    I'm always digging around for something new and literary - usually I find similar titles to what I've been reading, go to bookstores with staff who are really savvy of literature and look for their recommendations.

    3/06/2006 2:52 PM  

    Post a Comment

    << Home